Continuing our series on meditation and the fact that walking is one of the best overall exercises known to humanity, we get to walking meditation. Here you walk slowly with full awareness in the present moment.

Thus you pay attention to everything that is going on both inside and outside yourself. You pay attention to your senses without analysis. Thus sounds and sights become pure sights and sounds. Kinesthetic feelings (bodily feelings of muscles, the heat of the sun, the breeze on the skin) are just that (feelings).

As I was just walking I noticed a green object moving against a green background. In retrospect it was a green humming bird flying by a green tree of similar shade. At the time there was only a perception of movement.

Like all other forms of meditation at times your mind wonders and you start thinking. When you notice that you are thinking gently say, “Thoughts,” and return your focus of awareness back to the walking and your senses.

It is interesting that this focused awareness in fact expands your senses and consciousness. You end up hearing sounds from the distance when you are not trying to hear anything specific. You notice things in your visual field that you do not see normally even if you have walked this path many, many times before.

This walking meditation gets rid of the effects if stress like all other forms of meditation and another advantage is that since you are walking slowly you burn more calories for any given distance walked than if you walked faster.